The Collected Stories by Lorrie Moore
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I think I was in university when I first discovered Lorrie Moore, reading Like Life (1990) and then liking it so much that I read Birds of America too (1998). Oddly though, when I bought her ‘The Collected Stories’, shortly after its publication in 2008, I never tackled it (it’s a big book after all; there’s a boarding pass in it from when I must started it on a flight to Moscow). So, it’s strange to count that 17 years have gone by before I grabbed it from the shelf again and finally read it through. Seventeen years!
It has been a strange experience reading the book from the perspective of middle age. And I read it strangely too. The book starts with four new stories and then has stories from four books, from the most recent (1998) to the oldest (1985). I’m not sure why I disliked the new stories so much that I ended up jumping to the oldest stories and reading them first and then moved towards the newer ones.
I sense that part of why I was fascinated by her writing in my university years and hitting 30 was almost in an anthropological sense. This was what life was like for bitter middle-aged women in America! Their partners have affairs, constantly. They are always going through divorce and get through the bitterness with wordplay and jokes. People in middle age are always making jokes.
But now, in middle age, I can see that most people that I know are not like Moore’s protagonists and that there is much that I dislike about them. The jokes come across as a way of hiding or avoiding emotion. While the people are always betraying each other sexually and having affairs, I honestly can’t discern why any of them would be together in the first place. They never seem to like each other or care for each other. And I also found it frustrating that they all speak in such similar voices. A male character is described as being a basic guy and not very thoughtful, but his thoughts, as described by Moore are as poetic and witty as the other characters. Most characters regularly engage in witticism and wordplay.
I also found myself struggling with a common tool, the story (or part of a story) that culminates in a revelatory metaphor or image. I remember as a young man, and as a young writer, that I was impressed with them the first time around. But now, I’m not so sure. Take the end of ‘The Jewish Hunter’:
‘If she had spurned gifts from fate or God or some earnest substitute, she would never feel it in that way. She felt like someone of whom she was fond, an old and future friend of herself, still unspent and up ahead somewhere, like a light that moves.’
This is flashy writing. She would never feel like she was a person who had spurned gifts from fate? Instead, she feels like someone, not herself, but a friend to herself, still … unspent. A light that moves? Honestly, I don’t get it. Especially the strange but banal ‘light that moves’.
The last story that I read in the whole collection was probably the strangest, ‘Like Life’, told often in dreams, a sort of dystopian world where it is illegal ‘not to have a television’ and there is a large group of poor and unemployed and sick who sell flowers. In the end, the protagonist’s romantic partner, who is actually more affectionate than most of the men in the collection but also has more threat and aggression is revealed to possibly be a serial killer. And then it was clear to me that Moore’s stories may not at all be aspiring to be a reflection of life at all but instead exaggeration, distortion and jokes, or perhaps a mood or a place inside your head.
And while I did feel at odds with the immense praise included on the covers, or indeed, in the reviews I’ve seen, including here, I also note that Moore is a beautiful writer, and a skilled writer. Her descriptions are original and engaging. And when the stories are emotional and the characters are connected together and care about each other, I was affected. I cared too. The stories about a woman character caring for her mother (and the one with the trip to Ireland) are wonderful and the stories about parents dealing with the illness of a child are beautiful and tragic. I found ‘Joy’ to surprise me in that not a lot happens in the story and yet I was moved and delighted.
And then I also realised that these stories work better for me with a good break in between. The wordplay and wit in smaller doses are amusing, charming and funny, rather than relentless. The characters, with time to breathe, may not be so similar to each other as I thought (or I can forget about the ones from the previous story and allow the new ones to exist in their own territory).
It is a little mundane to say that I didn’t like some of the stories much and I liked a few a lot. I recognise that Moore is a talented and powerful writer, who cares about politics and the human condition, and it gives me insight into the ways we can use humour and wordplay to create distance, as defence, to hide hurt, to relieve anxiety and stress, but also to lift our spirits and connect us. I’m glad that I read Moore’s collected works and as with any author, I can see that some aspects of her writing will work for some readers and some won’t, and sometimes it will depend, as it did for me, on what stage of life I am at, what kind of life experience I have had and how much and with which characters I can connect with.
